This website is a collection of my writings which primarily deals with issues of political and socio-economic issues in the Caribbean.
It also contains links to important resources on the region and it's people.

Today, I was lucky enough to be invited to briefly speak on the MINUSTAH report and the role of NGO's in Haiti at this event. It was great to meet Dr. Balsiero, hear about his extremely important and inspiring work - in addition to meeting lots of people who are already doing their own work to help Haiti.

Attached are my prepared remarks, but I had to freestyle it because time was cut short:

Good evening, my name is Kevin Edmonds and I am a representative of the Toronto Haiti Action Committee, and wanted to thank Elizabeth Hill and the Canadian Cuban Friendship Association for the invitation, in addition to Dr. Balsiero for coming all the way up here to inform us of what great work Cuba is doing in Haiti. Thank you very much.

So very quickly, the reason that I am here is because I and several other doctors and human rights advocates recently finished a report on a group which has made the Cuban medical doctors work much, much harder in Haiti. That group is the United Nations. The report came out last month, and highlights the role of the UN engaging in human rights abuses in regards to sexual assault, rape, child prostitution, engaging in the extrajudicial murder of unarmed civilians and community activists, failing to prevent forced evictions from the IDP camps, and the introduction of cholera into the country. The report is titled “MINUSTAH: Keeping the Peace or Conspiring Against It?” is available online, via the Canada Haiti Action Network site, or that of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

MINUSTAH has been implicated in the murders of hundreds of civilians and social activists in the slums which were loyal to Aristide and his Lavalas party. MINUSTAH has been occupying the country since the illegal 2004 coup of Jean Bertrand Aristide, and has since endorsed and legitimized unconstitutional elections in 2006 and 2010 in which Lavalas was excluded. In 2010, Lavalas and 13 other political parties were excluded, yet the former head of MINUSTAH gave his approval to these farcical elections. The presence of MINUSTAH in Haiti is a direct violation of Haitian national sovereignty – and is directly opposed to their demands for self determination and democracy.

The most well known incident attributed to MINUSTAH is the introduction of cholera into Haiti by a Nepalese contingent based near the Mirebalais River. This link has been confirmed by independent reports by the Center for Disease Control, French medical professionals, and an investigative study by the American Society for Microbiology which confirmed that the Haitian strain was identical to an earlier outbreak in Nepal. The United Nations has yet to take responsibility, or acknowledge their role in the outbreak. At the time of publication the cholera epidemic had killed 6,345 people – infecting hundreds of thousands more.

While unintentional, the cholera outbreak was due to the systemic negligence of the both the troops and the United Nations, as untreated sewage was dumped into one of Central Haiti’s main waterways - a clear violation of camp procedure. The cholera incident also reveals the deeper political economy of peacekeeping, as for many poorer governments such as Nepal, the provision of peacekeepers is an important source of national income – bringing $1,024 per month per soldier. The fact that the Nepalese soldiers themselves came from cholera infected communities reveals how the United Nations is exploiting the poorest elements of very poor countries to suppress the demands for socio-economic justice and self determination in Haiti.

If we look at the Haiti’s history of colonial and imperial brutality via slavery, counter-revolutionary repression, planned coups, embargoes, debt bondage and isolation – revolutionary Haiti became the testing ground for many of the policies which were later placed on Cuba and other progressive minded countries. The present justification of the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has roots which will are familiar to our Cuban friends – that of containment. Despite being weakly justified due to the fact that Haiti poses a potential security risk to the region by gangsters and corrupt government – the reality is that MINUSTAH is in Haiti to contain an idea – that of making social and economic justice a reality. The reality is that the force sent to Haiti to bring security and stability has achieved the opposite. While I don’t endorse any occupation on others by any means, using the same logic there is no international occupation of Brazil with a violent crime rate nearly 6x that of Haiti, or even Washington DC which has a murder rate 3x higher.With the help of Wikileaks, it was revealed that the new phase of “South-South” peacekeeping operations (as Brazil was and still is the primary partner in MINUSTAH) was exactly that, as it was a front for the realization of US geopolitical interests. The cables revealed that the “UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti is an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [U.S. Government] policy interests in Haiti” and “a financial and regional security bargain for the USG.” Further US cables went on to reveal that “A premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government…vulnerable to…resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces—reversing gains of the last two years”.

A very recent delegation to Cuba on behalf of the School of Americas Watch reported that the majority of Haitians were opposed to the force, and that they were widely seen as the protectors of NGO’s and businesses in Haiti – not the people. This again highlights the systemic failure of MINUSTAH, as a great deal of the patchwork network of NGO’s claiming to do “good work” funnels money away from those who need assistance the most – leaving no public institutions or Haitian nurses or doctors. Depending on an unaccountable network of private interests to provide basic services for a population would be unacceptable in nearly every country, yet this is the basis of “development” in Haiti. The presence of MINUSTAH, and the suppression of popular democratic forces is conducive to making these NGO’s a great deal of money. As Paulo Friere stated in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed “In order to have the continued opportunity to express their generosity, the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this generosity, which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty.”

If any gains have been made in Haiti through MINUSTAH, they have come at the expense of the Haitian people and their demands for democracy and social justice. If the United Nations was serious about protecting the Haitian people and respecting democratic processes in Haiti, it would divert the nearly $1 billion annual budget for weapons and troops to sustainable initiatives to develop public sanitation, water, healthcare and educational facilities – initiatives that the Cuban health workers like Dr. Balsiero are already undertaking. Thanks for your time.

Almost two years after the devastating January 12th earthquake, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH by its French acronym) was given increased funding, personnel and an extended mandate to provide security and stability for the Haitian people. On October 4th, a Harvard based research group comprised of Canadian and US human rights advocates, doctors, journalists and public health experts released an extensively researched report which highlighted that the United Nations force has in fact been a continuous source of human rights abuses, helping to perpetuate the insecurity and instability they had been entrusted to fight.

Prior to the earthquake, MINUSTAH’s record was far from clean, as they had been involved in numerous scandals, related to sexual assault, political repression and the murders of civilians – including women, children and the elderly. In November 2007, 111 soldiers and 3 officers from a Sri Lankan battalion were repatriated due to allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse of Haitian minors.

A study of human rights abuses from 2004 to 2006 published in The Lancet, an independent, peer-reviewed medical journal, chronicled foreign soldiers issuing threats of death, physical harm, and sexual violence. Save the Children conducted an investigation in 2008, finding minors coerced into sex by UN forces for as little as 100 gourdes (2.50 USD). The murderous raids of Cite Soleil in 2005 (22,000 rounds were used in the 7 hour raid) and 2006 left nearly 100 dead, including a seven year old and four year old who were hit with bullets while they slept.

With this infamous past, one could only imagine that MINUSTAH had hit rock bottom in its involvement in human rights abuses and the popular opposition to the mission. Unfortunately for the Haitian people, this was simply not the case.

While incidents of sexual assault were a problem prior to the earthquake, the utter destruction of January 12th left over 1.6 million people without shelter, with tent or tarp shelters providing women and children a very precarious existence.

While the primary objective of MINUSTAH is to protect the Haitian people, they have failed miserably to provide protection to the residents of the internally displaced camps from sexual assault and rape.

Amnesty International noted that the “lack of security in and around the camps is one of the main factors contributing to sexual and other forms of gender-based violence,” stating that “protection measures have not been fully integrated into the humanitarian response.” According to a study by the United States Institute of Peace, 75% of camp residents interviewed said they rarely or never saw a single MINUSTAH officer in the camps.

This indifference to the attacks on women and children has led to an environment where acts of sexual assault, rape and violence can continue without the threat of punishment. As such, the thousands of cases of rape and sexual assault have led to the development of numerous internal security patrols made up of camp residents. Such organizations point to the total failure of MINUSTAH to provide any element of protection to the Haitian people.

In September, several investigative reports by Ansel Herz broke the story of Uruguayan peacekeepers sexually assaulting an 18-year-old Haitian man in a high-profile incident that was caught on video. Unlike the Sri Lankan contingent however, this time the accused soldiers are currently being held in custody until their trial.

Evidence has also emerged that MINUSTAH troops have frequently engaged in transactional sex with minors, often leading to pregnancy and the burden of raising children without support from fathers who generally leave Haiti after their deployment period.

MINUSTAH’s blatant disregard for the security of Haiti’s internally displaced extends to the very camps themselves. After the earthquake many camps were established on private land under the assumption they would be temporary. As the relief and reconstruction effort totally stalled, over a million Haitian people were subjected to threats of forced evictions – a clear violation of long established humanitarian laws. The first stage of the eviction process occurred through the cutting off of essential services such as water.

If that failed to depopulate the camps, the owners of the land would employ armed gangs to intimidate the residents – often resulting in physical violence and the destruction and burning of tents.

Despite the dedicated coverage by several human rights organizations, and the acknowledgement by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in September 2010 that an estimated “29% of the 1,268 camps studied had been closed forcibly, meaning the often violent relocation of tens of thousands of people” – the UN has yet to actively intervene to stop these forced evictions. Excellent photo journalism by the group Bri Kouri Nouvel Gaye has documented the evictions here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaetantguevara/with/5901592659/

The most well known incident attributed to MINUSTAH is the introduction of cholera into Haiti by a Nepalese contingent based near the Mirebalais River. This link has been confirmed by independent reports by the Centers for Disease Control, French medical professionals, and an investigative study by the American Society for Microbiology which confirmed that the Haitian strain was identical to an earlier outbreak in Nepal. The United Nations has yet to take responsibility, or acknowledge their role in the outbreak. At the time of publication the cholera epidemic had killed 6,345 people – infecting hundreds of thousands more.

While unintentional, the cholera outbreak was due to the systemic negligence of both the troops and the United Nations, as untreated sewage was dumped into one of Central Haiti’s main waterways – a clear violation of camp procedure.

The cholera incident also reveals the deeper political economy of peacekeeping, as for many poorer governments such as Nepal, the provision of peacekeepers is an important source of national income.

The United Nations is exploiting the poorest elements of poor countries to suppress the demands for socio-economic justice and self determination in Haiti.

When the Haitian people have mobilized and rallied against the destabilizing presence of MINUSTAH, they do so at a tremendous personal risk, as unarmed protestors and bystanders have routinely been shot and killed by the force. In other instances, women and children have been gassed in the tent camps to disband the political demonstrations. These protests have both grown in size and frequency since the cholera epidemic began in October 2010, and carried on throughout the course of the exclusionary Presidential elections in November and February in which 14 political parties were banned.

In addition to protecting the Haitian people, MINUSTAH’s mandate clearly outlines that one of its primary goals is “to support the constitutional and political processes; to assist in organizing, monitoring, and carrying out free and fair municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections” yet it raised no objections to the well-documented electoral irregularities which occurred on November 28th, 2010.

The outcome of the Presidential election that systematically excluded the majority of the population has only contributed to the political instability of the country. Sensing this instability and lack of popular support, President Michel Martelly has expressed his intention to resurrect the currently disbanded Haitian army – a force which was infamous for its violent oppression of the Haitian people.

While the rationale for MINUSTAH’s presence in Haiti is “justified” by the United Nations through extremely vague technicalities under the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, most would agree that the presence of the force violates the sovereignty of the Haitian state. It was after all imposed upon the Haitian people in the aftermath of an illegal coup against Jean Bertrand Aristide, with the United Nations determining that “the situation in Haiti constituted a threat to international peace and security”. Former head of MINUSTAH, Edmond Mulet has justified this occupation in such explicit terms, saying that if MINUSTAH left the country it would “just fall apart”, and identified Haiti as “a society, community, a nation that has committed collective suicide.”

The argument against the Responsibility to Protect doctrine can fill many volumes, but it was best summed up by Yves Engler who asked “who gets to decide when a country becomes a ‘failed state’ or when ‘gross human rights violations’ were occurring?

What if a government is failing because powerful countries have destabilized it? What if the destabilization is a result of government policies that challenge corporate and elite interests in those powerful countries? Rather than be a force for good the ‘responsibility to protect’ could just as easily be a cover for imperialism.”

With the help of Wikileaks, it was revealed that the new phase of “South-South” peacekeeping operations (as Brazil was and still is the primary partner in MINUSTAH) was exactly that, as it was a front for the realization of US geopolitical interests. The cables revealed that the “UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti is an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [U.S. Government] policy interests in Haiti” and “a financial and regional security bargain for the USG.” Further US cables went on to reveal that “A premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government…vulnerable to…resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces—reversing gains of the last two years”.

If any gains have been made in Haiti through MINUSTAH, they have come at the expense of the Haitian people and their demands for democracy and social justice. If the United Nations was serious about protecting the Haitian people and respecting democratic processes in Haiti, it would divert the nearly US$1 billion annual budget for weapons and troops to sustainable initiatives to develop public sanitation, water, healthcare and educational facilities.

As it stands, MINUSTAH is a force which has compiled a notorious human rights record in Haiti, and as such has drawn the opposition of the majority of the Haitian people. The way to move forward in Haiti is to recognize and correct the mistakes of MINUSTAH, not to compound them through an extension of the force’s mandate. Since 2004 MINUSTAH has acted with total impunity under the “Status of Forces Agreement” which sets the norms for international peacekeeping standards, and has totally failed to achieve its mandate of protecting the Haitian people.

The mission has deteriorated to such an extreme state that serious considerations must be made about who will protect the Haitian people from MINUSTAH.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

On Saturday October 15th, Roger Annis and I will be at the Canadian Peace Alliance Conference @ Ryerson University presenting a workshop on "Canada in Haiti: The military face of the neoliberal agenda" which is essentially a discussion about Canada’s ongoing military/police presence in Haiti, and how it supports Canadian corporate interests in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Today I had a chance to talk with Kabir of Radio Basics about the role of MINUSTAH in Haiti, and the recently released report on this involvement in human rights abuses. As always, Kabir was on point and brought up the importance of understanding the failure of MINUSTAH to prevent such "peacekeeping" episodes in Libya or Syria.

· Eyewitness reports on weak and inadequate post-earthquake reconstruction· Paralysis of the presidency of Michel Martelly· Wikileaks documents exposing role of U.S. government and its allies in subverting Haiti’s sovereignty and development· Crimes of UN intervention and Haitian resistance to UN military occupation

· Roger Annis, coordinator of the Canada Haiti Action Network in Vancouver and director of a ten-day fact-finding and solidarity mission to Haiti in June, 2011

· Rosena Joseph, learning coach in Toronto, member of CUPE Local 3393 and member of the fact-finding mission